HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX AND INEQUALITY ADJUSTED HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX OF SELECTED SOUTH ASIAN COUNTRIES

Abstract

Enlarging people’s choice and enhancing human capabilities” – the well-known definition propounded by Human Development report (HDR) 1990 – led the path for many economists and researchers to turn the lime light on and foray in this direction against predefined notions of economic development and growth. Human development eventually has become a broader and more acceptable concept. Since then, tremendous amount of work has been done in this direction for countries across world. However, such indices for South Asian countries exclusively and comparison therein has remained unattended. The present paper intends to evaluate the human development indices and three key dimension of human development – health, literacy and income. In 2010, HDR, UNDP, proposed the Inequality Adjusted Human Development Index1 which tried to gauge the subgroup inequality. The Atkinson Inequality Index2 was used to work out subgroup inequality and to arrive at Inequality Adjusted Human development Index (IHDI). Infact, it was later realised that human development without measuring subgroup inequality would mask reality. The present paper is predominantly conceived to understand performance of India vis. a vis. other South Asian countries on human development dynamics. Each parameter is carefully analysed to ameliorate understanding of parameters and their impact on human development. The outcome of study is- human development dynamics and human capabilities measurement is redundant and meaningless unless the inequality in each parameter is premeditated which will in turn enhance the understanding.